Books like The Dalemark Quartet

The four books included in this omnibus are listed below. I've read this before, but it has been quite a while, and as I recall it's not a real fast read (maybe because the book is heavy!) Cart and CwidderClennen the singer, his wife and 4 children are traveling through Dalemark. They pick up Kialan as a passenger, but he acts very strange. Clennen's son Moril inherits his cwidder, a musical instrument that has strange powers which Moril must learn to use to save Kialan.Drowned AmmetMitt is a young boy in the slums of Holand, who dreams of being a revolutionary and putting down the oppressive rule of the earls in the south of Dalemark. When his part of an uprising goes wrong, he must flee - and he ends up on a boat owned by two children of one of the hated earls, Hildy and Ynen, the children of Navis. They go to the Holy Islands with the help of Old Ammet and Libby Beer, avatars of the Undying. The story ends when the three children and Navis are helped by the islanders to get away and sail to the north.The SpellcoatsI realized too late that this one should be read first - it deals with happenings in prehistoric Dalemark, well before the times of the previous two books. The five children of Closti the Clam live near the River. The story is told by the fourth youngest, Tanaqui, who is weaving their story into rugcoats. Their father and eldest brother Gull have to go away to fight the Heathens, leaving the children behind. The people of the village hate them, except for their uncle Kestrel, because they are blond-haired instead of brown and look like the people the villagers call the Heathens. Their father does not return, but Gull returns a shattered man. When the river rises unexpectedly and floods them out, they load everything into a boat and go off down the river to escape the villagers, taking the statues of their 'Undying' gods, with them - the One, the Lady, and the Young One. When they reach the sea, they meet the evil Kankredin, a sorcerer, and get involved in a war against him. The River and their gods help them, but the book ends just before the final battle, with Tanaqui struggling to finish her final weaving.The Crown of DalemarkThe first section of the book begins somewhere after Drowned Ammet left off, with Mitt now in the service of Countess of Aberath. He is told that Ynen will be killed unless Mitt agrees to kill a girl called Noreth, who is looking for the crown of Dalemark to unite the north and south. Then the second book switches to modern times 200 years later, and a girl called Maewen, who is traveling by train to Kernsberg to visit her father who is the curator at the Tannoreth Palace. The palace contains a lot of portraits and artifacts from olden days. When Wend, her father's secretary, hands Maewen a golden statue of the One, she is suddenly sent back in time to take Noreth's place. Wend is with her, and Mitt and Navis are there, as is Moril the singer from Cart and Cwidder. She is supposed to find the ring, the cup, and the sword of the true king which will lead to an uprising that eventually will unite the north and south. But the remnants of the evil mage Kankredin are reassembling themselves, and he is doing his best to steer Maewen into the wrong paths. The rest of the story tells what she overcomes to find the three artifacts and eventually get back to her own time. I felt this was the most exciting book of the four, but it ends with Maewen determined to find the witch Cennoreth and find Mitt again. So it was a rather unsatisfying ending - I felt as if there should be a fifth book to wrap everything up.